Blog For CIOs

June 2010 Archive

We recently embarked on a Forrester-wide research project to benchmark the use of social technologies across enterprise organizations. Why is this important? Well, as you may know, we cover social technologies from a wide range of perspectives – from roles in marketing to IT to technology professionals. We find that each of these roles differ in their general “social maturity” and that most companies are experiencing pockets of success, but few, if any, are successfully implementing it across the board. In fact, full maturity in this space could take years, but there are clear differences in how some ahead-of-the-curve companies are using social technologies for business results. In fact, at this point it has been clearly established by many people (including us many times over) that social technologies are transformative tools that are changing the way companies do business. So we’re not talking as much about the opportunity social presents, but rather we are trying to determine the current reality of practitioners. It’s also clear that many companies have made tremendous strides in planning and organizing for the use of social technologies. However, the one question we consistently get is: “Where is my organization compared to others in the use of social media?” We want to benchmark these companies to see if we can answer questions like:

How do you define “social maturity,” and why is it important to get there?

Which companies are ahead of the curve in implementing social technologies for both external use (i.e., for customers/consumers) and/or internal use (i.e., for employees/partners)?

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We recently embarked on a Forrester-wide research project to benchmark the use of social technologies across enterprise organizations. Why is this important? Well, as you may know, we cover social technologies from a wide range of perspectives — from roles in marketing to IT to technology professionals. We find each of these roles differs in its general “social maturity” and that most companies are experiencing pockets of success, but few, if any, are successfully implementing it across the board. In fact, full maturity in this space could take years, but there are clear differences in how some ahead-of-the-curve companies are using social technologies for business results. In fact, at this point it has been clearly established by many people (including us many times over) that social technologies as transformative tools that are changing the way companies do business. So we’re not talking as much about the opportunity social presents, but rather we are trying to determine the current reality of practitioners. It’s also clear that many companies have made tremendous strides in planning and organizing for the use of social technologies. However, the one question we consistently get is: “where is my organization compared to others in the use of social media?” We want to benchmark these companies to see if we can answer questions like:

How do you define “social maturity” and why is it important to get there?

Which companies are ahead of the curve in implementing social technologies for both external use (i.e., for customers/consumers) and/or internal use (i.e., for employees/partners)?

A recent email got my attention. It highlighted a blog post on the MIT Technology Review website about a video from RSA Animate (copied below) illustrating a lecture by Dan Pink (@danielpink on Twitter): "The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us," based on his book of the same name.

What got my attention? We need to stop rewarding with a carrot and threatening with a stick. The video highlights multiple research findings that suggest knowledge workers are more motivated by autonomy, mastery and purpose than by financial reward. Pink suggests that financial incentives may actually have a detrimental impact on performance under certain circumstances. (The research suggests money is a motivator for purely mechanical tasks but as soon as some level of cognitive processing is required to complete the task, money is secondary to other factors.)

I have to say this was a little hard to swallow at first. But then I almost missed a key point: this is only true when minimum financial rewards are met, i.e. when employees are paid a large enough base salary, financial incentives to deliver high performance may be detrimental when compared to other motivators such as the desire for: autonomy, mastery of skills, and a sense of purpose.

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Forrester's IT Forum EMEA 2010 in Lisbon, Portugal, is finally here! We're expecting about 500 people on-site and I can tell you that the content we've developed with Forrester analysts and our great roster of invited speakers is even better than years past. We've been talking about Business Technology (BT) transformation for a while now, but this year you made it clear that the time for theory is over and you want to know how to make it real.

Today, you'll hear from George Colony, our CEO, followed by keynotes from Peter Hambling, CIO at Lloyds of London, who will tell us why BT is essential to Lloyds in the fast-moving world of risk management and insurance. Alex Cullen, Research Director serving Enterprise Architecture professionals, will help bridge the gap between business and IT using business capability maps, and Ted Schadler, Vice President and Principal Analyst serving Information & Knowledge Management professionals, will talk about leveraging empowered customers and employees to drive business success. He will be joined by two special guests, Michiel Boreel, CTO at Sogeti, and Fernando Summers Gil, Head of Knowledge Management Innovation at BPVA.

If you can't attend, be sure to check out the highlights of the speeches and the Twitter stream below.

To the surprise of no one, today Apple unveiled the fourth version of its iconic device: iPhone 4. While some features such as the higher resolution camera, LED flash, and front facing camera qualify more as upgrades that put Apple back on par with leading competitors, others such as the "retina" display and the gorgeous industrial design will maintain Apple's mindshare and market share growth rates.

Apple is going to sell a lot of iPhone 4s. They'll sell them to those who simply have to have the new new thing (many of whom are iPhone owners already), and to iPhone owners who were off contract and waiting for the new version. They'll also sell a lot of iPhone 3GSs, especially to iPhone 3G owners who can't stomach going without iOS 4's multitasking, and also to those for whom $15/month is a manageable addition but $30/month is not. That's a whole lot of good news for AT&T and Apple's other carrier partners, though that good news is more in the form of loyalty than in net additions to their networks.

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Each year we conduct a search for the best examples of social media/social communities as part of our search for winners of the prestigious Forrester Groundswell Awards. This year we have added a new category of award aimed at internal communities designed to help management with innovation and/or collaboration across the organization — communities that empower employees.

In the fall I’ll be helping my colleague, Ted Schadler — co-author of the upcoming book Empowered — to judge the winners of the management category. So if you have a social community or social media success story please consider nominating your firm for one or more categories in this year’s awards.

Next week, vendors from across the social computing landscape will converge on Boston for TechWeb’s Enterprise 2.0, a business Web 2.0 conference and trade show. In advance of this event – which I will be attending – I thought I’d discuss a topic that has started to emerge in my research of social software: the proliferation of social components in business applications. More specifically, I want to address a question a client recently raised: is having a social layer going to be necessary for businesses to adopt business applications going forward?

Over the last few years, we have seen software vendors position social tools as part of software suites such as collaboration platforms (e.g. SharePoint 2010, Lotus Connections), project management packages (e.g. ThoughtWorks Mingle), BPM tools (e.g. ARISalign) and CRM systems (e.g. Salesforce Chatter). This is the natural reaction to what seems to be heavy business interest in these technologies: 65% of firms deploy at least one Web 2.0 tool. However, the marketing and selling of these tools is predicated on two myths:

Myth #1: Information workers are clamoring for these social tools. I have sat in on many vendor briefings where a company representative tells me employees demand Facebook-like or Twitter-like tools to do their jobs. Not true. When we ask information workers about their use of social networks, wikis, discussion forums, blogs, and microblogs for work, only a small group actually uses them; social networking tools, the best-adopted technology, is used by only 12% of information workers. When we ask non-users their desire in using each of these tools, small portions express interest; the most sought-after technology, discussion forums, only piques the interest of 15% of information workers.

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In this podcast Claire covers the three most common types of relationships in workplace mentoring and goes on to discuss the benefits to the mentor, mentee, and organization. She cites two major companies that have succesfully implemented large scale mentoring technology implementations. Critical components for successful mentoring programs are discussed and the podcast is closed with takeways for establishing a mentoring program.

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According to IBM’s CEO Sam Palmisano, “vision without execution is delusion.” That saying stuck in the minds of attendees at IBM’s SmarterCities event in Shanghai last week making it the de facto theme of the event. According to Palmisano, it’s time to move beyond ideas and put those ideas into practice.

I would argue, however, that when it comes to making “cities” smarter it’s not a question of “vision without execution.” IBM and others are executing, particularly in China and other emerging markets. IBM’s growth markets revenue was up 19% in 2009, up from 18% growth in 2008. China alone grew 14.7 % in 2010. In many markets, stimulus funding has spurred spending on “smart” initiatives.

Rather, it is still more a question of vision. The mantra of smarter cities resonates with many — it’s like motherhood and apple pie, or the equivalents across the globe (rice pudding? crème brûlée?). You can’t argue against it. But, can you show me a smarter city? “Smarter cities” is a catch-all phrase for any initiative undertaken by a government or even nongovernmental entity — the transport ministry or tax agency, the postal service, a hospital or university, or even an association of exporters. Don’t get me wrong; I love the idea. I’ve just been wrestling with a definition for some time now. Everything can be a “city” and within IBM’s sights.